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Your metabolism is constantly changing.
Eating, exercise, sleep, stress, recovery, and other everyday factors affect the biochemical processes taking place throughout the body. Yet most of the measurements we use to understand metabolic health are collected only occasionally. A blood test may provide valuable information, but it is fundamentally a snapshot of one moment in time.
ViBo Health is developing DigiScan™ to make another approach possible: non-invasive metabolic measurements that are simple enough to repeat over time.
DigiScan uses magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to measure metabolic signals from the finger. Proprietary sensing technology, signal processing, and artificial intelligence are then used to extract and analyze information from those signals.
The goal is to make metabolic measurement frequent enough to reveal change.
Magnetic resonance is best known through MRI, which uses the magnetic properties of atoms in the body to create detailed anatomical images. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy uses related physics for a different purpose: instead of primarily creating an image, MRS examines the chemical signals produced by molecules within tissue.
DigiScan applies this principle to a compact system designed specifically for metabolic measurement.
A user places a finger into the DigiScan device. The system acquires magnetic resonance signals from the tissue, processes those signals, and uses computational methods to extract metabolic information.
The basic process is:
Finger → Magnetic Resonance Measurement → Metabolic Signals → Signal Processing & AI → Metabolic Information
Because the measurement is non-invasive and does not require a blood draw, DigiScan is being designed for repeated use. Measurements collected over time can then be compared with an individual's previous measurements rather than viewed only as isolated results.
This creates the foundation for longitudinal metabolic tracking.
Metabolism is the collection of chemical processes that keeps the body functioning. These processes convert food into energy, build and repair tissue, respond to physical activity, and help maintain the body's internal environment.
They are also dynamic.
A person's metabolic state can change in response to meals, exercise, sleep, stress, illness, medication, recovery, and many other influences. Some changes occur quickly. Others develop gradually over weeks, months, or years.
Traditional health measurements remain extremely important, but they are often collected relatively infrequently. This makes it difficult to observe what happens between measurements.
DigiScan is being developed around a different idea: if metabolic measurement becomes easier to repeat, the pattern of change itself can become useful information.
Rather than asking only:
“What is my measurement today?”
we can begin asking:
“How is my metabolism changing over time?”
That distinction is central to ViBo Health's approach.
Metabolomics is the study of metabolites—small molecules produced, consumed, or transformed by the chemical reactions taking place in living systems.
Metabolites include compounds involved in energy production, carbohydrate metabolism, lipid metabolism, cellular activity, and many other biological processes. Because metabolites sit close to the actual biochemical activity occurring in the body, they can provide a useful window into physiological state.
Modern metabolomics research typically examines many metabolites and the relationships among them. Researchers can use these patterns to study how physiology changes in response to disease, diet, exercise, drugs, environmental exposure, and other factors.
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy is one of the established analytical technologies used in metabolomics research.
DigiScan does not attempt to reproduce a complete laboratory metabolomics analysis inside a small device. Instead, ViBo Health is applying magnetic resonance sensing, signal processing, and computational analysis to identify metabolic information that can be measured non-invasively and repeatedly from peripheral tissue.
As the technology and supporting evidence develop, the range and interpretation of metabolic information available from the platform can expand.
From a Snapshot to a Trend
Most health data is interpreted by comparing a measurement against a reference range or population.
That is useful—but it is only one way to understand a measurement.
Frequent measurements introduce another possibility: comparing you with you.
A series of measurements can establish an individual baseline and show how metabolic signals change around that baseline. Over time, those measurements may reveal trends, responses, and recovery patterns that would be difficult to see from occasional measurements alone.
For example, longitudinal measurement can potentially help characterize:
Baseline → Perturbation → Response → Recovery
The perturbation might be exercise, a meal, a lifestyle change, or another controlled or naturally occurring event. The resulting pattern can contain information that a single measurement cannot provide.
This is one reason ViBo Health believes repeatability is as important as convenience. A measurement that can be performed frequently creates a fundamentally different type of dataset.
From Metabolic Data to Metabolic Intelligence
More measurements alone do not necessarily produce better information.
The challenge is to determine which signals matter, how they change, how those changes relate to an individual's baseline, and which patterns are meaningful over time.
This is where computational analysis and artificial intelligence become important.
ViBo Health is developing analytical methods to process magnetic resonance signals, separate useful metabolic information from noise and variation, compare measurements over time, and ultimately translate longitudinal data into information that people can understand and use.
The long-term objective is Metabolic Intelligence: combining repeated objective measurements with computational analysis to provide a clearer picture of metabolic change.
Instead of relying solely on population averages and occasional measurements, longitudinal data can potentially establish an increasingly detailed picture of an individual's own metabolic patterns.
Designed for Frequent Measurement
For longitudinal tracking to work, measurement has to be practical.
Traditional laboratory testing can provide detailed information, but blood collection, laboratory processing, cost, and inconvenience limit how frequently many tests can reasonably be performed.
DigiScan is being designed around a different set of requirements.
The measurement is non-invasive. It is performed from the finger. It does not require a blood draw. And the system is being developed for rapid, repeatable use outside the traditional laboratory environment.
That creates the possibility of incorporating objective metabolic measurement into settings where frequent conventional testing would be impractical.
ViBo Health's initial commercial focus is employer wellness. Employers already invest in wellness programs, preventive health initiatives, and lifestyle interventions, but maintaining participation and engagement can be difficult.
DigiScan is designed to add a new feedback loop:
Measure → Understand → Act → Repeat
Frequent objective feedback may help people see how their metabolic health is changing and connect everyday choices with measurable changes over time.
Employer wellness is ViBo Health's initial market, but the underlying technology is a platform.
Non-invasive, repeatable metabolic measurement could ultimately have applications wherever understanding physiological change over time is valuable.
Potential areas of research and future application include preventive health, fitness and recovery, occupational health, longitudinal health research, and other settings where frequent metabolic information could complement existing measurements.
Those applications will require their own technical, clinical, and regulatory evidence. ViBo Health's near-term focus is therefore narrower: develop DigiScan as a robust metabolic tracking platform, establish repeatable human measurements, build the evidence base, and advance the technology toward employer wellness deployment.
The larger opportunity comes from what happens when metabolic measurement is no longer something that occurs only occasionally.
If we can measure metabolism more frequently, we can begin to understand change—not just snapshots.
